


maybe true love was the goats we burned along the way

by allonsytosherwoodforest, friendlybomber, spaceyho



Series: the unholy trinity [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Falling In Love, M/M, Romance, gävlebocken, nicky youre so stupid you love him you idiot, trip to sweden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13025202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsytosherwoodforest/pseuds/allonsytosherwoodforest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlybomber/pseuds/friendlybomber, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceyho/pseuds/spaceyho
Summary: Nicklas Backstrom burned down the Gävle Goat, scored the game-winning goal, and kissed Alexander Ovechkin, all for the sake of a good Christmas. OR; Nicky and Ovi fly to Sweden to destroy that goddamn goat.





	maybe true love was the goats we burned along the way

**Author's Note:**

> The Gävle Goat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat

They put up two fences around the goat this year. Two fences, security cameras, and a troop of constant-surveillance guards. The day was December 14, and the goat had not yet been burned.

"This is unacceptable,” Nicky said.

"What is?” Ovi asked.

Nicky threw his phone down on the table. The boys in the bagel room glanced over.

"I don’t understand,” said Tom. “What’s the problem?”

"The goat,” Andre supplied around the mouthful of bagel he was gnawing on like a teething ring.

"The goat?” Tom asked.

"The goat.” Nicky confirmed.

"Oh,” Ovi said.

"It must be burned,” Nicky said. He glared at his phone as if his gaze alone could set the goat on fire.

"Papa you can’t just leave us to go to Sweden! Andre’s still teething,” Tom said.

"I’m not going to Sweden,” Nicky said.

"Why not?” Ovi asked.

"Andre’s still teething,” Nicky replied.

 

"You know, we could go to Sweden,” Ovi said, gliding up to Nicky at practice. Nicky scoffed and popped out his mouth guard.

"Yeah okay,” Nicky said. He flipped it up and down between his teeth.

"Christmas goat very important,” Ovi said. “Gotta burn it.”

Nicky stared up at the rafters. A million thoughts raced behind his dead shark eyes. Finally, he slid his mouth guard back in and looked sidelong at Ovi.

"Maybe,” he said, and skated away.

 

Ovi played hockey like he barreled through life: unapologetic, loud, and dynamic. He produced results with dangerous efficiency, and he loved every second. As he crashed into Nicky during his second game celly – _God_ – he grinned his big jack-o-lantern smile and bellowed and generally made a complete ass of himself.

Nicky thought, without fully realizing it, that this was what ecstasy was meant to describe.

Ovi gloved Nicky’s helmet, pushing his head down with the force of his excitement. The ice was cold and Nicky’s neck was hot and Ovi’s smile was brighter than anything.

"Light it up, baby!” Ovi shouted in his ear.

Nicky knew he was talking about the goat.

 

Nicky closed his eyes against the pull of the plane taking off, shifting his shoulder down to accommodate Ovi’s head.

The goat had to be burned.

It was a matter of pride, really. National pride, or personal pride, it didn’t matter. The fact of the matter was, every year the goat wasn’t burned was a bad Christmas. Sure, Gävle – and the Gävle goat was the only one that really mattered – fought the good fight and pretended they didn’t want the goat burned, but here’s the thing: the goat had to be burned. It was inarguable. It was part of Gävle. And Nicky was Gävle in the same way that all squares were rectangles.

He never would have gone if Ovi hadn’t made him, though. Sure, he could expound upon matters of pride and loyalty as he dozed on the plane, but who had bought the tickets? Who had convinced him to pack his bags? He was under no delusions of this stupid plan’s mastermind. Nicky thought the thoughts. Ovi made them happen.

Ovi nuzzled into Nicky’s neck, his beard tickling the delicate space between Nicky’s collar and his Adam’s apple. He couldn’t have ever asked for a better captain or a better friend. It wasn’t every day someone offered to fly to Sweden to burn down a goat.

"Happy you agreed to go,” Ovi murmured.

Nicky’s tongue felt like cotton. He attributed it to the altitude.

"The last foreigner to burn the goat got deported,” Nicky said. “Who’d save your ass if you got caught?”

"Wouldn’t get caught,” Ovi said. His head lolled back. His eyes were still closed. He looked handsome. He looked like the sort of man who smiled perfect dentist-approved smiles from in-flight magazines. As funny as the notion was, if Ovi’s face replaced every man in those magazines, Nicky wouldn’t have complained.

"No?” Nicky laughed.

"No,” Ovi said. “I run very fast.”

Nicky just grinned and shook his head and looked out the window away from the sleepy, wonderful Russian who dragged him there in the first place. The land gave way to water beneath them. Only nine more hours until they made the magic happen.

 

"It’s bigger than it looks online,” Ovi said, his hands balled into fists on his hips. He stared up at the goat with a calculating expression on his face. The snow crunched beneath their boots.

“So are the fences,” Nicky said. “You think we can jump them?”

“Maybe,” Ovi said. “Need a running start.”

“Then you could just defensive slide into the goat,” Nicky said.

“Crash the goat,” Ovi said.

Nicky laughed. “Maybe if you set yourself on fire.”

“Guards are looking,” Ovi said. “Quick, take tourist picture.”

They plastered on fake toothy smiles and waved into Ovi’s phone camera. The guards eyeing them up continued their sweep, casting only occasional suspicious looks toward the hockey players. When they finally looked away for good, Nicky’s face dropped into its typical impassive slate.

"We’ll need gasoline and a lighter,” Nicky muttered. “And some way to get over the fence.”

"And take out the cameras,” Ovi said.

"I have a plan,” Nicky said, and he turned and walked away, his hands buried deep in his pockets.

"Oh,” Ovi said. He trotted after him. “Okay, Nicky, I’m listen.”

Of course he was. The goat had to be burned.     

 

"What are your Christmas plans?” Nicky asked. He sipped his coffee – Americans had no souls and no fika, and those two concepts were related – and eyed Ovi up and down.

Ovi shrugged. “Be with family. Play hockey. You?”

Nicky made a noncommittal noise.

"No plans?” Ovi asked.

Nicky set down his mug. “Maybe watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ or something. You know, fly back into D.C. We’re in Vegas on the 23rd.”

"Maybe we take Schmidty with us,” Ovi said. “Take him home for Christmas.”

"What, smuggle him back on the plane? We could just stay in Vegas for Christmas,” Nicky said, aware that he was making Christmas plans for him and Ovi and unaware of what that meant.

"Awh, Christmas in Vegas,” Ovi whooped. He waggled his eyebrows. Nicky scoffed and looked away.

"I changed my mind, I’m not going back,” Nicky said. “You can fly back on your own.”

"Nicky no,” Ovi said. “They’ll find you. You gotta leave the country. You committed a crime, you know?”

"I didn’t burn down the goat yet,” Nicky said.

"But when you do, need alibi,” Ovi said. “‘I play hockey in America’ is a good alibi.”

Nicky just sipped his coffee. They were quiet for a little while, a comfortable, easy silence, the kind of silence that comes from years of playing and working together. It wasn’t a bad silence. Ovi never shut the fuck up, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew, despite how it seemed to the rest of the world, when to hold his tongue. And he knew when Nicky was thinking. He knew Nicky like Nicky knew Gävle.

"We could do Christmas together,” Ovi suggested softly.

Nicky smiled. He took another sip of his coffee.

"Yeah,” he responded, his voice low. “That would be nice.”

 

If the goat didn’t burn, it wasn’t a good Christmas.

Nicky wanted his good Christmas.

At nine o clock, they parked within walking distance and made their way to the goat. There was only so much time, and everything had to align perfectly. The cameras were easy. Nicky rolled a pile of fist-sized rocks up into innocuous snowballs. When the guards looked away, he chucked them, one by one, until every camera lay in pieces in the snow.

That’s when Ovi struck. He stumbled up to the goat, clutching an open bottle of vodka – actually gasoline, like there was that much of a difference – and waved at the guards. They hesitated, then waved back.

"A little late to be out, don’t you think?” they called to him in Swedish.

"Do you speak Russian?” he called back in Russian.

At their confused looks, he grinned, big and horrible, like he had just scored another fucking goal, and waved the bottle above his head.

"You’re so fucking stupid!” he cried with glee, then pointed to the shattered remains of the security cameras.

The guards’ faces fell. They looked at each other, then back at Ovi, then back to the security cameras.

"Shit,” they said in Swedish, or so Ovi assumed, because it sounded almost exactly like English with more air and less mouth movement.

"Don’t move,” one of the guards said to Ovi, holding out his hand as if the Russian Machine would ever fucking listen. They ran to the cameras, pulling out their walkie-talkies.

And then Nicky made a breakaway.

His feet threw up clouds of puffy snow as he streaked toward the fenced goat. Ovi placed down the open bottle and crouched in the snow, holding his hands together as a platform. Nicky was sprinting at full speed, the night wind whipping at his cheeks. A manic grin split his face. He swiped up the bottle in one fluid motion and stepped onto Ovi’s hands. He jumped, and as he did, Ovi lifted him from the ground, propelling him up over the fences and into the snow at the goat’s feet. Nicky flopped on his stomach, still clutching the bottle of gasoline, and gasped for breath.

He emptied the gasoline onto the goat’s straw leg, still pressed to the ground. He pulled the second bottle from its strappings on his back and uncorked it, splashing it onto the goat as well. Then, he uncapped a gas station Capitals lighter and held it to the goat’s soaked leg.

They fireproofed the goat every year. It was part of their futile war to keep it alive. Two vodka bottles of gasoline and a cheap lighter shouldn’t have been able to catch.

But it did. By some sort of Christmas miracle – or maybe it was just that Ovi was losing his shit as the guards realized what was happening, since Ovi was a miracle in and of himself – the lighter licked at the goat’s leg, and the flame caught.

Straw and gasoline burn brighter and hotter than anything. Nicky grinned at the crackling, spreading fire, his face lit up red like a game-winning goal buzzer.

Light it up, baby.

And then he came back to reality because Ovi was screaming his name and the guards were running for the goat. Nicky staggered to his feet, snow cascading off of him. He scooped up the dejected fire extinguisher laying by the goat – a failsafe, and not one that needed be – and skittered back to the corner of the fences. The guards fumbled with the locked door. By the time they made it in, the goat was wearing a pair of lethal, fiery pants.

"Hold it right there!” the guards screamed.

Nicky prepared to run.

They both came around the same side together. Nicky almost laughed. He _did_ laugh. In their panic, they had left him a clear path to the gate. Easy as pie. He sprinted down the opposite side of the flaming goat, still clutching the fire extinguisher. As he passed through the gate, he threw it shut behind him. It locked instantly. He ripped toward Ovi, still laughing like a mad man.

Ovi held out his arms. His hair was fluttering in the wind, his face lit up with one of his eye-devouring smiles. Soot and ash rained down on him. He screamed the way he screamed when he scored, when he made something of nothing and changed the goddamn world.

Nicky tossed the fire extinguisher aside and collided with Ovi hard enough to knock them both down. They collapsed into the snow, yelling in each other’s faces. Then, Nicky got his bearings and looked down at Ovi and held his breath.

Ovi’s face was a million strange colors in the light of the flames. Oranges and yellows and greys and pinks, all shadows and highlights, a glasswork mosaic of a miracle. He was smiling so wide his eyes were gone behind his cheeks, his grin seeming to take up three quarters of his face.

He was crazy. He was wonderful.

Nicky kissed him.

He tasted like coffee and Swedish snow and gasoline and metal. He smelled like cologne and soot and Nicky’s car. He looked like a fucking idiot, laying in the snow getting kissed to the backdrop of a flaming goat. He felt like victory. He felt like Ovi.

When Nicky broke the kiss, Ovi grinned at him again, so Nicky had to kiss him again. He pulled him close, his fists buried in the lapels of his coat. Behind them, the guards threw snow onto the flickering, devouring, exalting ball of fire.

The air was both hot and cold.  Both were magnificent.  

And Ovi didn’t miss a trick.

“What was the kiss for?” he asked, looking awfully pleased with himself.

"We celebrate scoring goals,” Nicky said. “Did you forget?”

Ovi stroked the side of Nicky’s face. “I forgot everything when you kissed me.”

Sparks from the goat landed on Nicky’s coat. He flicked them off and looked back at Ovi, his smile softening.

"You’re an idiot,” he said.

"Hey! Stop!”

The guards, having given up on their futile quest to extinguish the goat, were unlocking the gate. As they fought to swing the door open, Nicky rolled off Ovi, his smile fading. 

"We should go,” he said.

"They won’t catch us,” Ovi grinned, and he got to his feet and took off running.

They could both run very fast. As they piled into Nicky’s car and screamed away, the goat collapsed, falling back into the snow, consumed by the flames, a Gavle tradition, the ultimate tribute to a good Christmas.

 

The ice was cold and Nicky’s neck was hot and Ovi’s smile was brighter than anything.

They had just won their game in Vegas (sorry, Schmidty) and nothing tasted sweeter than a well-earned victory. Nicky would know. He bumped his forehead against Ovi’s, but didn’t linger, moving on to congratulate Tom and Andre and Kuzy and Vee and all the rest of their fucking great team of boys. There would be time for Ovi later – Christmas in Vegas was officially a go – but for now, all their team was magic.

“You should burn that goat every year, bud,” Holts said. Nicky shrugged.

“I didn’t burn the goat,” he said.

“He play hockey in America,” Ovi yelled, practically hanging off Nicky to bump Holts’s head.

“Right,” Holts called as they skated off toward the tunnel together.

Ovi placed his glove over Nicky’s neck, pulling him close. “I bet you’ll be first star,” he murmured.

“Nah,” Nicky said.

“A goal and a Nicklas Backstrom hat trick!” Ovi protested. Nicky threw him off and skated away.

“Don’t call it that,” he said.

“Papa got a Nicklas Backstrom hat trick!” Andre yelled. Well, that was that. It would catch on _now._   

"What’s that, three assists in one game?” Tom asked.

"No,” Nicky said. “It’s a goal, a goat, and Christmas in Vegas.”

"I thought you didn’t burn the goat,” Andre said.

"I didn’t,” Nicky said. He glanced over at Ovi. “As far as you know.”

They went down the tunnel, and maybe it wasn’t like flying to Sweden, but it was far enough away from the things that didn’t matter that Nicky felt good about what he did next. He pulled Ovi in close and held their faces only a few inches apart, unable to keep the smile from his eyes.

"Thank you,” he said.

"For the game-winning assist?” Ovi asked.

"Yeah,” Nicky said, and he kissed him.

And you know, it was almost as satisfying as burning that goddamn goat to the ground.

                

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas


End file.
